


ill give you a war

by downthedarkpath



Series: bad blood [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Family Dynamic, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, War, War AU, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28581084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downthedarkpath/pseuds/downthedarkpath
Summary: “There was a bombing today,” Phil says next week. He’s glued to the wireless. Tommy’s finished the carton of cigarettes in Techno’s sock drawer. Soot and ash starts building up along the skirting boards.
Relationships: Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: bad blood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204082
Comments: 28
Kudos: 147





	ill give you a war

**Author's Note:**

> haha. yeah :)
> 
> title from [bad blood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DeM8CYxqU) by birdeatsbaby (very good band; fully recommend)

The letter arrives on a Tuesday.

It’s for Wilbur. Tommy peers through the gaps in the bannisters and watches him pick the envelope up. He had watched when Phil had collected it and left it for him on the kitchen table, too.

The envelope is small. The scripture on it is curled and loopy - Tommy can’t read what it says, but the ink is smeared into the paper. Wilbur traces a finger over the tail of a letter reverently, like he’s worshipping it.

Tommy knows what it is. Tubbo’s brother had received one last week, and he’d spent several hours chattering about it till Tommy’s ear fell off. He’d known Wilbur was eligible - all of them are, he hates to think. 

The grin on Wilbur’s face grows. Tommy wonders if he’s just trying to hide his fear. His voice does shake when he calls, “Phil! Techno! Tommy!”

Phil sits in the living room. He has a pipe between his thumb and forefinger, a habit he’d all but condemned to the three of them but indulged in himself. Tommy doesn’t mention the half empty carton of cigarettes stashed in Techno’s sock draw, the carton they’d all dipped into at some point or another.

Phil’s disappointment would be immeasurable if he found out. 

He hears Techno before he sees him, hears the landing floorboards creak and the bannister creak and the stairs creak until Techno is behind him. He asks, “why are you sitting there?” like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“Wilbur got a letter,” Tommy says. Understanding crosses Techno’s face. Fear splatters behind it.

“A letter?”

“One of  _ the  _ letters.”

Techno looks at him. Tommy wonders what he sees. Then, he steps past and into the kitchen. Tommy can only follow him.

Phil’s moved to one of the kitchen chairs now. Smoke chokes out of the pipe, the tobacco sweet and sour at once, curling around each of them. It smells like home now. He says, “are you going to open it for us?”

Techno leans against the counter top, against the cupboard with the missing door handle. Tommy thinks about copying him. Instead, he lingers in the doorway. The house might smell like home, but he’s still afraid.

“Of course I’m going to open it,” Wilbur says. He sounds excited; not scared. Phil hands him the special letter opener, the solid silver blade with a stylised dragon wrapping around the handle. It’s for special occasions only. Tommy doesn’t feel very special right now.

The paper tears easily. It crumbles under Wilbur’s fingers. Tommy thinks he can see his hands shaking. When he pulls the slip of paper out, Tommy’s heart jumps to his throat. He wonders how Wilbur’s is even still beating.

“I can’t believe you got one,” Techno says. He sounds… jealous.

Wilbur bites his lip. “Me neither.” He unfolds the letter, and his eyes flicker over it. Everyone is holding their breath.

“Well?” Phil asks. “What does it say?”

He sniffs. He exhales. “To Wilbur Arthur Soot. Having submitted yourself to a local board, blah blah blah, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and services therein. You will therefore report to Waterloo at eight hundred hours on the seventeenth day of April.”

“That’s next week,” Tommy says.

Phil nods. “A week from today.”

“Oh, my God,” Wilbur says.

Yeah, Tommy thinks. Yeah.

* * *

Phil has to stand on his tiptoes to kiss Wilbur’s cheek. They’ve lined up in the hallway, just by the door. There’s no point in the four of them trekking to Waterloo together - Wilbur had gone so far as to prohibit it in case Phil starts crying and embarrasses them all in public.

Tommy’s hands are shaking. Techno stands at parade rest. Wilbur slouches his shoulders and tries to be brave.

“You are going to be so good,” Phil says. “I am so proud of you.”

“Thanks, Phil,” Wilbur says. Tommy doesn’t look at them. He concentrates on the way Wilbur’s knuckles turn white where he’s gripping his bag.

“You stay safe, you hear me? I don’t want you coming home in a body bag.”

“I don’t want that either, Phil,” Wilbur says. “I’m gonna miss my train.”

Techno steps forward. “Wilbur.” They don’t hug. They shake hands. Tommy wants to cry. It has to mean something to them. 

“Techno.”

When Wilbur turns to Tommy, he can barely look at him. “Tommy.”

“Bye, Wilbur.”

It’s all he can say. When Wilbur says, “be good for Phil, okay? Write me loads,” all he can do is nod.

Wilbur smiles at them all. He sets his shoulders. When the door shuts behind him, Phil sobs.

* * *

The house is quiet without him. Not that Wilbur had ever made much noise in the first place. Phil sits in the chair by the fireplace, smokes his pipe, and mourns. He listens to the wireless, the cheap one they’d barely been able to afford, and he listens to it obsessively. He’s waiting for the death counts, Tommy knows. He’s waiting for them to announce Wilbur’s name.

Techno locks the door to his bedroom and lights up the rest of the cigarette carton. Phil doesn’t even comment on the smell. When he shares one with Tommy, and they sit on his window sill and don’t talk for several hours, and Tommy’s throat thickens around the nicotine, no one says anything at all.

Tommy doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

He pushes all the chairs around in the kitchen. He loosens one of the bannister poles, twisting it around and around until he can remove it. No one notices.

There’s no word from anyone. Not even Wilbur.

* * *

The next one is for Techno. He holds his letter like it’s a bomb, in hands so stiff they turn white. Tommy expects the envelope to tear in two. He wonders if that’s what Techno is trying to do.

Phil barely reacts when he brings it to the living room. Tommy watches his eyes, watches for something. For anything.

Techno takes the letter opener from the mantle piece. It’s scaled handle fits in his palm perfectly. The paper tears easily.

Techno doesn’t read his aloud. They already know what it’ll say. All he says is, “Monday.” Four days.

It’s too soon. It’s not soon enough. Tommy wonders if it would be better if Techno left right now, if he left and never looked back.

He dreads Monday’s arrival. Tommy goes to sleep on Sunday and hopes he’ll never wake up again.

* * *

Techno is not as tall as Wilbur. Phil doesn’t kiss his cheek, either. Instead, he puts his hand on Techno’s shoulder and squeezes it. Techno puts his hand on top of Phil’s.

“I’ll be okay,” he says. Tommy can’t tell if he’s reassuring Phil or himself more. “I’ll be fine. I’ll send you lots of letters, and I’ll expect lots of them back.”

“Of course you’ll be okay,” Phil says. He doesn’t hold himself together this time. There are already tears on his face. “How could you ever not be okay?”

“Exactly,” Techno says. “I love you, Phil. Thank you for everything.”

It’s like he’s saying goodbye. Like he’s saying it forever. Tommy doesn’t want to listen - he wants to cover his eyes and ears and block it all out.

Techno looks at him. “I’ll see you around, Tommy. Be good for Phil. Take care of yourselves.”

“Come back and take care of him yourself,” Tommy says. He squeezes his lips together. The look Techno gives him is indecipherable, but he knows he doesn’t like it.

“I’ll be back soon,” Techno says. Phil nods along with him, even if it looks like he’s barely hearing the words. 

“Of course you will,” he says. He nods like a bobble head.

This time, when the door shuts, Phil doesn’t cry at all. He pulls the deadbolt across and he turns to Tommy. “You’re not gonna leave too, are you?”

Tommy shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to say. He hopes he isn’t lying about it.

* * *

“There was a bombing today,” Phil says next week. He’s glued to the wireless. Tommy’s finished the carton of cigarettes in Techno’s sock drawer. Soot and ash starts building up along the skirting boards.

“Where?” Tommy asks. He pushes boiled potatoes and canned peas around a plate. Rationing has become harsher recently - there’s hardly anything left. They’ve built an air raid shelter in the back garden and Phil’s moved everything into it. It’s like they don’t even exist anymore.

“France,” Phil says. “Twenty thousand dead.”

“Jesus.”

There’s nothing else to say. They sit in silence. Tommy wonders if Phil is mourning. 

“I wonder if Wilbur and Techno were there,” Tommy says.

“Don’t say that.”

“Sorry.”

* * *

There is a final letter on the kitchen table. Phil stands in the doorway and stares at it. Tommy sits in one of the chairs. He doesn’t want to touch it.

“Are you opening that?” Phil asks. He sounds empty.

Tommy squeezes his hands together. He puts them on top of the table, and then back in his lap. Phil doesn’t give him his letter opener this time. Tommy digs his finger under the flap of the opening and rips it.

He doesn’t read it. He looks at the date and nowhere else. Phil looks at him. He doesn’t ask.

Tommy stands up. He leaves the paper on the table. He stops at the calendar hung on the wall, he picks up the red pen sellotaped beside it.

He circles Thursday the ninth. Then he leaves. Phil lets him go.

* * *

Phil sits in his chair. He smokes embers into the carpet. Tommy watches him from the gap in the bannisters.

He’s avoiding Phil. He stays in his bedroom, and Phil stays in the armchair. The house holds merely ghosts, and they’re so completely alone.

When the ninth comes around, when Tommy stands at the front door and waits, nothing happens. Phil moves slowly. There’s a permanent groove worn into his thumb from the pipe. He looks older than Tommy has ever seen him.

There’s nothing to say. Phil hugs him, hugs him like it’s a chore, and it’s like hugging a stranger. Tommy doesn’t recognise him anymore.

When Tommy steps off of the front step, the sun is shining. It burns him. It feels like he has the whole world at his fingertips. He doesn’t want it. 

**Author's Note:**

> so :D what do we think :D
> 
> obviously there is room for expansion in this au. perhaps ill get around to that at some point?
> 
> theres no particular time or place this occurs - somewhere mid worldwar 2, probably. anyway, thanks for reading! feel free to drop me a comment, id love to know what you think about it.


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